Oven-Roasted Hen of the Woods

It's shroom-hunting season! And thanks to a local forager, we found ourself in possession of half a soccer ball's worth of Hen of the Woods, AKA Maitake. Biff decided to oven roast it, using a simplification of this recipe, and it was SO GOOD and so easy that we're sharing it here. (We had so much shroom that Biff ended up oven roasting a pan's worth of them, then stir-frying the rest with collards and bell pepper, and the oven roasting came out notably more delicious.) ( RECIPE! )

Jogappa: Gender Identity and the Politics of Exclusion, by Aneka

During the pandemic, we discovered the Chuangqi Trilogy by Lydia Kwa: Oracle Bone, the Walking Boy (which we read first), and (just now we discovered) the third book is in preorder, A Dream Wants Waking. (We have just now ordered it. QUEER ROBOT GHOST FUTURE YESPLZ.)

Oracle Bone and the Walking Boy both take place in Tang Dynasty, China--specifically, the capital city of Chang'an. Kwa (who's both a poet and a psychologist by trade) has a gift for delineating the complexity of human relationships, both good and bad, in this beautiful quiet way. She makes this ancient time in a faraway land feel so real and alive; we totally recommend these books if you're interested in queer, character-relationship-focused magical realism of the Chinese variety.

This post is NOT about any of that though. Instead, it's about the OTHER book we found THANKS to her books.

( Learning about a transgender group in India who marry and are possessed by a goddess. )

EDIT: more quotes:

( Read more... )